


The Undesirables

by Valkyrien



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: AU, Also Tact, Cursing People Is So Medieval Seriously, Even If It Is Only Because Trying To Hit That Just To Score Off Someone Else Is Tacky, Get Another Hobby, Get Your Mind Off Uninterested Heirs To The Asgardian Throne And Screwing With People For Funsies, Hell Hath No Fury Like A Vain Enchantress Rejected, Multi, Previously Unconfronted Issues, Someone Please Explain Morals To Amora, Take A Salsa Class Maybe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-11 18:36:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2078793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyrien/pseuds/Valkyrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thor may have joined The Avengers, in the aftermath of his exile, but he's brought two things into the bargain which are not nearly as appreciated as he is himself. The first and least welcome are his enemies, one of whom takes a personal grudge against Thor to the arena of Midgard where it leads to the cursing of Steve Rogers.</p>
<p>Perhaps the other unmentioned, undesired element Thor has dragged to New York will prove the solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something No One Could Desire

**Author's Note:**

> I was originally working on a story with this general premise when I was alerted to the Tumblr post of a fellow fan of this pairing asking for something very similar which provided some undeniably inspiring ideas!
> 
> This is for that reason neither quite what I was originally going for, nor perhaps exactly what Munchy was thinking of, but because it's me I couldn't resist including feelings and issues and all that sort of thing, so hopefully it's still enough of both to satisfy!

 

 

 

   ” _Something no one could desire_ ,” Steve hears.

 

 

   Over and over, it is thrown back at him, echoing from the lips of others and off his own state of shock, repeated with all manner of inflection and in the most hideously recognisable shades of emotion.

 

 

   Pity. Mockery. Anger. Vague and uncomfortably issued concern.

 

 

   When Steve is at last released from S.H.I.E.L.D custody, once they have exhausted all possible tests and avenues of scientific inquiry seemingly without a thought for Steve’s own exhaustion, burdened him with medical paraphernalia and unconvincing, patently false hope, his team descend, fussing, interfering, assuming guardianship and control and disregarding both Steve himself as a potential part of the decision-making process and any concept of Steve’s ability to manage his own affairs.

 

 

   It is dressed in the shabby robe of genuine fear for his wellbeing, but Steve, even shocked and fatigued beyond reason physically and mentally, can see the discomfort beneath the thin veneer of justified presumptions that this is merely part of some greater plan to get rid of Captain America entirely and knows exactly what they’re doing.

 

 

   Assuming responsibility for someone whom they do not trust can take responsibility for themselves, an evaluation based in perceived complete weakness and shored up by the inability to retain whatever opinion of him they held prior to this.

 

 

   Typically, beyond the decision to take him into custody of their own and put him in Stark’s ridiculous Tower, they appear incapable of agreeing on any further course of action, and it is only when the situation dissolves into angry bickering and Bruce begins to withdraw that Steve is – gently, to Bruce’s credit – shepherded out alongside him and deposited in the quarters that have been assigned to Steve by Jarvis.

 

 

   Shadowed by aches which had been held distant by shock throughout the nightmare but which are now steadily encroaching on his awareness of himself, Steve walks through the floor of rooms which have been given over for his usage to the first bedroom he sees. The doors shut and lock themselves behind him, lights dimming as he goes, paid no mind but a hazy thought that it must be Jarvis’ doing and a faint gratitude that the AI is not addressing him.

 

 

   Steve kicks off borrowed shoes, and medical scrubs, slips under anonymously pale bed linens to lie prone on a mattress which barely gives at all beneath him.

 

 

   There is a harsh, laboured sound as of air passing with difficulty through narrow channels, and Steve would thank Jarvis for adjusting the room’s temperature to accommodate his need for more warmth than is usually the norm on other floors of the Tower, but the other rooms of this apartment had been pleasantly warm already, and there was no chill of entering a locale less well-heated than the others when Steve crossed this threshold.

 

 

   Steve drags his gaze from the utterly unadorned ceiling to find the bruising in pale, skinny elbows which evidence hours spent under the scrutiny of impersonal S.H.I.E.L.D personnel in lab coats taking samples that in no way answered their questions or satisfied their desire to examine such things direct from the person of Captain America.

 

 

   He looks at the bruises until the dark of them begins to shade the edges of his vision, until he is no longer certain whether his eyes are still open or not.

 

 

   “ _Something no one could desire_ ,” he hears, both rasping and gilded in malice.

 

 

   Only the lack of unfamiliarity in it all allows him to sleep at last, conscious only of just how perverse that really is.

 

 

  


	2. Something Lost To Time

 

 

 

 

   There is no moment, upon waking, where Steve believes that it must all have been a hideous dream provoked by painkillers, that the grogginess is a lasting side-effect of same and that the aching of his body is solely due to having been put through a wall or two during some battle or other the specifics of which he can’t quite recall.

 

 

   There is no respite from the truth. There isn’t even any need for Steve to open his eyes and be horrified all over again at what he’s seeing.

 

 

   Steve knows this body intimately, with all its failings and in all its limitations, and he knows the difference between a nightmare replicating old sensations and memories and what the wearily familiar struggle of being really means.

 

 

   It might be a mixture of residual shock and enforced mental dissociation that get him upright and seated on the edge of the bed, but it’s the discomfort of everything that is so well-worn and routine to him that he can plod into the bathroom and turn on the lights without incident.

 

 

   He manipulates the tap with only a cursory recognition of the conscious effort required to twist the fancy knob fixture and how it digs into his hand with the exertion, and washes his face as if this were any other morning, any other day.

 

 

   Groping for the stack of deep navy blue hand towels next to the sink, Steve blots his face and takes a deep breath before squaring off to the mirror and taking stock.

 

 

   From the hollows under his eyes and cheekbones to the deep definition of his ribs and the thin, brittle look of his arms – riddled with bruises and puncture marks from yesterday’s blood-pressure cuffs and electrodes and the apparently endless two-way traffic of syringes wielded by S.H.I.E.L.D medical personnel and scientists in some complex and obscure collect-and-delivery system understood only by them – the reality is this.

 

 

   Steve Rogers has been cursed by a vindictive alien enchantress, and the particulars of this curse – the result, really – is an unwanted and completely unexpected return to his pre-serum body exactly as it was prior to Erskine’s treatment. Maybe even a little less well-fed and a little more battered, even, than Steve was at the time of treatment taking place.

 

 

   He’s essentially been cursed... with _himself_.

 

 

   The twisted humour of the thing provokes a grin too sharp and bright not to class as at least mildly hysterical, but the laughter that seizes him is genuine in a way nothing has been since he was thawed out and dumped into this disappointing modern world, and Steve lets it run its course, hunched over the marble countertop stomach cramping with laughter too big for his frame, as if he’s been saving it up for the surreal nonsensicality of this moment and what things have come to even before he went down with the plane.

 

 

   As it winds down and dissolves into gasps and throat-clearing, slightly shaking fingers wiping away the moisture of overly-felt mirth and ridiculousness, some unseen speaker, in soft and respectful tones, says,

 

 

   “Pardon my intrusion, Captain Rogers, but Miss Potts has instructed me to inform you that once you are sufficiently rested, you will find what she hopes you will deem suitable garments in the dressing room adjacent to this en suite. The kitchen at the end of the hall has also been stocked, should you not wish to join the Avengers currently in residence on the communal floor.”

 

 

   Briefly, Steve is furious at the violation that is this continual assumption that he can’t be trusted to provide for himself, can’t be left alone to tend to his own personal needs, but he swallows it and takes a deep, steadying breath. Naturally Miss Potts is only being her usual, graciously hospitable self. A hostess of her calibre is rare enough these days, apparently, and she appears to take genuine pleasure in seeing to it that anyone staying under her roof is as comfortable as possible. She’s the last person Steve should be getting annoyed with for simply being generous towards him.

 

 

   “Thank you, Jarvis,” he manages, but although his voice was never really affected by his transformation, remaining largely the same as it has always been ever since it first broke and matured into a depth surprising for the chest it initially emerged from, Steve still can’t seem to make himself speak up, the act of talking in itself too much of a tangible connection to this body, and he’s relieved when Jarvis chooses not to respond.

 

 

   It’s pure habit that sees him through the rest of his usual bathroom ritual, and the nostalgia that accompanies the act of combing his hair off his face is only made strange by the fact that the hand doing it is now thin again, making it suddenly less a symptom of the need born of instruction to be presentable where possible and more an echo of his mother’s teaching that this is the absolute bare minimum of grooming acceptable for public perambulation.

 

 

   If Steve chooses to focus his sadness when he steps into the dressing room which Jarvis spoke of on the fact that his mother would have liked Miss Potts, had these two excellent women ever had the chance to meet, instead of his actual current situation, then he’s not going to examine the choice too closely. He firmly believes that his mother would have liked and approved of any woman who exercised the level of consideration for who Steve is as a person and what he likes as a consequence of that visible in what has been put on the shelves and in the drawers of this room.

 

 

   Thanks to this consideration combined with Miss Potts’ natural good taste, Steve is able to move through to the kitchen fully dressed and as comfortable as he can possibly be in the wake of what’s been done to him, and for this Steve is profoundly thankful. He just doesn’t think he could have faced dealing with one more thing that makes him feel even less like himself than he already does – for all that it might be a strange thing to feel in the first place given that this is the body he was born and raised in and actually the one he’s consciously spent the most time in.

 

 

   Steve dully supposes that it lends great credence to what Bucky was always saying about Steve being too big on the inside for his own skin to keep in, but today the thought of Bucky is a deeper and more debilitating pain than usual, as if his memory is brought closer and made sharper by the fact of Steve once again wearing the body that no one but Bucky ever used to be able to look past to who Steve really was and is.

 

 

   The fridge and cupboards have indeed been stocked with food, and Steve uses the well-worn motions of making a simple sandwich to chase away the pain that is inescapably tied to thoughts of Bucky, but once he’s finished and has both hands wrapped around bread and various fillings to take his first bite, he realises what he’s done.

 

 

   He’s made this sandwich as though he were feeding a far larger body with a far more voracious metabolism.

 

 

   He hasn’t even put away everything he used to make it, as if he’s expecting that he might well want another one immediately after he’s finished eating this one and has for that reason left the ingredients out for convenience.

 

 

   Setting it down on the plate again without so much as tasting it, Steve doesn’t give the sandwich another glance as he tidies up after himself and walks out of the room, back as straight as it was even before he was shipped off to Lehigh to try and earn something a good man ended up giving his life for.

 

 

   Something that, despite all its many benefits, still couldn’t save Steve’s best friend.

 

 

   Something which, like everything else Steve has ever had, is now probably gone forever.

 

 

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, everything relating to my writing can be found on http://valkyriens-extranummer.tumblr.com/
> 
> If there are any questions about my writing, or even comments that you don't want to put here for whatever reason - for this or any other story - you're all more than welcome to pose them to me there. I will also be placing content relevant to this story on there as things progress.


	3. Some Things You Never Lose

 

 

 

    The atmosphere in the kitchen area of the communal floor is tense and laced with an undercurrent of disorganisation and miscommunication.

 

 

   That’s nothing new when it comes to this motley group of individuals whose only real reason for interaction is that together they make up The Avengers – which is itself still such a new and untried thing between them all that none of them have had the time to really develop any faith in the initiative or their new teammates – but it does mean that anything they could be getting done is suffering under the weight of all these strong personalities, who are in fairness throwing it around a touch liberally.

 

 

   The soldier in Steve – the _Captain_ in Steve – balks at this kind of ineffective squabbling being allowed to continue and steal time from everyone involved without at any point getting within spitting distance of an intelligent solution.

 

 

   The _Steve Rogers_ in Steve takes a deep breath when still beyond the doorway to the kitchen and steels himself for the inevitable.

 

 

   “ – saying is that we have to face up to the fact that this might not – ”

 

 

   “ _Of course_ it’s not going to work because magic _isn’t fucking real!_ ”

 

 

   “If it’s not real then how the hell do you explain – ”

 

 

   “ ** _Alright!_** ” Steve says loudly, putting the full force of learned authority behind his tone and stepping into the room to face the chaos,

 

 

   “Tell me what you’ve got.”

 

 

   Stark freezes with one finger pointed in accusation across the kitchen island at Barton and the other hand gripping a sloshing tumbler of alcohol as if still considering whether to use it as a projectile. Barton’s entire posture stiffens into alert as he focuses on Steve, while next to him Natasha straightens from leaning in over the island and places a hand on her hip, mouth twisting while she assesses Steve clinically, and in the far corner made up by the countertops converging, Bruce unfolds his arms and leaves them hanging by his sides, everything about him looking nervous and harangued.

 

 

   “Speak of the Devil,” Stark mutters, burying his face in his tumbler, and Bruce shoots him a dark look and then twitches a hesitant smile Steve’s way.

 

 

   “Steve, good morning,” he says, tight but friendly despite it,

 

 

   “We were just discussing – ”

 

 

   “That magic is bullshit,” Stark mumbles belligerently, and Bruce overrides him firmly with,

 

 

   “ _The situation._ ”

 

 

   With another quelling look at Stark, he continues,

 

 

   “I’m afraid we really don’t have much to go on right now. Thor’s the only one of us who actually knows anything about this Amora person, and he’s, well... not here.” Bruce shrugs uncomfortably at the statement, not quite apologetic but still willing to indicate that he knows Thor shouldn’t be gallivanting about the place when he’s the sole member of the Avengers with any information on this individual and any kind of idea of what’s going on here.

 

 

   “Then where is he?” Steve asks, rapidly losing patience, and Barton tilts his head and lifts a shoulder carelessly.

 

 

   “He said he was going after her,” he divulges,

 

 

   “Since he’s the only one who knows her.”

 

 

   “You couldn’t have stopped him? What was he going to do if he caught up to her?” Steve demands. No one seems willing to meet his eyes.

 

 

   “He said he would bring her in,” Natasha says levelly,

 

 

   “If possible.”

 

 

   “ _If possible?_ ” Steve echoes,

 

 

   “You all know Thor’s methods, and we know he has history with this woman, and you didn’t go with him when he went to try and secure her _‘if possible’_?”

 

 

   “He said something about magic and branches and some other shit we didn’t really get, and then he took off,” Clint says with a vague wave of his hand at the mention of magic,

 

 

   “Anyway, it’s not like the rest of us could find her or take her down if she’s some kind of space witch or whatever.”

 

 

   Steve tries to force his arms to remain by his sides but has to admit defeat and allow the right to curl across his chest for the other to rest on while he pinches hard at the bridge of his nose and exhales slowly in the face of the monumental pile of steaming incompetence and wilful rejection of any kind of responsibility which the Avengers become without proper supervision.

 

 

   “So you’re telling me that Thor went to find this Amora alone, and we don’t know where he was going to look or when he’ll be back, and in the meantime we don’t know any more than we did before because no one thought it might be a good idea to get some information out of Thor before he left,” he sums up, voice tight with the effort to restrain the anger and disappointment he’s feeling,

 

 

   “Right. So what are the rest of you doing?”

 

 

   “Trying to explain to _some people_ that _magic_ isn’t _real_ ,” Stark snaps, glaring at Barton, who immediately starts in with,

 

 

   “ _Then explain what she did!_ See, you can’t, can you? And if you can’t fucking explain it, I’m going with magic – that’s what Thor said it was, and he’d know!”

 

 

   “It doesn’t _matter_ what it was because either way we’re probably going to need Amora herself to reverse it – we’re too likely to do more harm than good if we try anything ourselves,” Bruce tries to appease them, and Tony rounds on him with betrayal writ large and overly dramatic on his face.

 

 

   “You can’t be serious,” he splutters,

 

 

   “ _Magic?_ You really believe that whatever this crazy bitch did was _magic_ and _science_ doesn’t have a hope in hell of reversing it? Science _made_ Cap! Without _science_ he’d still be – ” he casts around with flailing limbs, scattering droplets from his tumbler every which way until he finally shakes a finger in Steve’s direction and expels,

 

 

   “ – well, _that!_ ”

 

 

   There is a split second of fraught, static silence, enough for both Steve’s arms to tighten across his chest, to absorb the blow, and then Natasha’s voice slices through it, sharp and clean,

 

 

   “That’s _enough_.”

 

 

   Stark turns away in what isn’t quite a flinch, sullenly creeping towards the array of bottles at the bar to refill his tumbler, and Barton settles back into himself with a slight shake as if he’s resetting some internal process. Bruce is staring at the floor, hands folded, resembling nothing so much as a severely chastened child even though his has been the only sensible effort made in this pointless exchange.

 

 

   “Steve, you look tired,” Natasha says evenly,

 

 

   “I know yesterday was a trial. Why don’t you go and rest up while we wait for Thor. The lab said they were running some comparative tests on tissue samples as well. If we hear anything, we’ll let you know.”

 

 

   There’s no sympathy to her gaze – there isn’t even any pity, and Steve can be thankful for that much – but there is dismissal and the expectation that her suggestions will be obeyed like the orders they really are, and this unspoken decision to relieve Steve of any vestiges of command he might have had left hurts more than Stark’s carelessness or Barton’s nonchalance.

 

 

   It hurts because this is not a combat situation. This is not a situation that requires the application of brute force or physicality. This is strategy and leadership, and to be dismissed as if incapable of providing that when Steve’s brain is the only part of him that’s still the same as ever, that’s still got everything it needs to do the job – that is the worst, the most diminishing, insulting thing he could suffer.

 

 

   There’s no reason to let them see that.

 

 

   Steve straightens his back and sets his shoulders like a cross for the hanging and then tips his head up and faces them just like he’s faced everyone else who ever doubted his worth.

 

 

   “See that you do,” he says curtly, with every inch of rank and the experience of that backing his words, and then he turns and walks away.

 

 

  

**Author's Note:**

> Original Munchy Tumblr Post here, my replies visible below: http://m-u-n-c-h-y.tumblr.com/post/68018333858/can-someone-please-tell-me-that-i-am-not-the-only


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